Anxiety Assignment #1

I. The Deep End

When I was a kid I had a lot to live for, and my single greatest fear was a shark in the deep end of a swimming pool.

It wasn't until I was 10 that I realized you weren't supposed to keep your eyes open in chlorine and that not everyone walked away from a pool day totally blind.

I'm not sure what my plan would have been having spotted it, but the fear of not seeing the shark was greater than the fear of seeing it. The fear of not knowing for sure, with metaphysical certainty, that there wasn't a shark lurking in the deep end waiting for me.

I was a weird kid.

Now, many years later, with far less imagination and what feels like less to live for, I wish for impossible things like sharks in swimming pools to happen so that this monotonous life might be interrupted. I wish lightning would hit me, or for every computer on earth to explode simultaneously, or that I'd fall into a wormhole and wake up in 1763, or for war, or an alien invasion.

Rarely does it cross my mind that if I decided to change my own life and make different choices none of the above would be necessary.

But taking responsibility is scary. Deciding to change your life when, from the outside looking in, your life seems just fine is crazy. Almost as scary and crazy as jumping off a diving board when the statistical chance that a fully matured Great White shark is waiting for you is slim, but never zero.

II. I Envy You, Sharks

I recently realized I envy sharks. I am deeply envious that they are born apex predators of the sea. What do they have to fear or be anxious about?

I am deeply envious that they have very simple, straightforward goals: swim and eat. What do they have to worry about besides fulfilling these two very achievable goals?

Also, sharks do not pay taxes or answer emails and I envy them for that.

What I'm really saying is, I'm envious that life is so black and white for a shark, so reducible, so predictable, and yet so free. Though, as I wrote that sentence, I just remembered we're heavily overfishing their populations and the black market for shark fins is still very much a thing, so if sharks were capable of critical thinking and emotion, I guess they would be fearful and anxious about humans and our nets and knives. But I don't think they are capable of that level of thought or emotion.

And I envy them a little bit for that too.

III. Is God a Great White Shark?

The longest a Great White has been held in captivity is 198 days.

It fills me with admiration to know that a Great White cannot or will not live in an artificial setting, that it is so powerful, free, and wild that it must and can only live in the ocean.

It fills me with admiration to know there is something out there that humans cannot possess. That there is something out there greater than us, mysterious, unknowable.

IV. Reading Jaws

At my local library, there was a first edition copy of Jaws by Peter Benchley that I visited ritually and held in higher reverence than the Bible.

My dad would let me look at the cover: black, with alarmingly orange writing on the spine, and a ghostly white shark pointed up at a woman swimming carelessly across the front. He'd also let me read just the first line, "The great fish moved silently through the night water, propelled by short sweeps of its crescent tail."

I always dismissed that Peter Benchley regretted the impact of his story having created the most terrifyingly murderous, man-eating, bloodthirsty villain, but when I read past that first eerie line of Jaws, I understood better (a common side effect of reading). I was shocked by how plainly the shark is written. The shark has no agenda, no emotion, no intention. All of that is projected onto it by the characters, and by you, the reader.

V. Sleepless

How strange that a shark has so little to fear in the ocean and yet is never at peace, never at rest, doesn't dream, is never home. Many species need to swim to live, or more accurately stated, need to keep water and oxygen flowing over their gills to live.

If they stop, they die.

How strange that the more successful I am, the more unhappy and restless I become. I need to earn, climb, run, and burn candle ends and midnight oil just to live. Never at peace, never at rest, without dreams, alone.

If I stop, would I die too?